If you take a look at today's most popular devices it's easy to see the shift away from specialized gadgets to universal tools. The Nook from Barnes and Noble is the not-so-missing link between ereaders and tablets, camcorders are shooting still pictures and vice versa, and of course there are our cell phones, which are screaming toward becoming the all-in-one device of the future. Martin Cooper, grandfather of cell phones, thinks that's a bad thing.

The 80 year-old has voiced his 'simple is better' opinion about the iPhone in the past, and he's said it again to a privacy conference in Madrid this week. “Whenever you create a universal device that does all things for all people, it does not do any things well." Cooper's really put me in a pickle here. Obviously the guy has made very significant contributions to the world's technological progression, but it seems he's lost his gift for foresight.

To say that a device that does all things cannot do any one thing well is just patently false. Take a look at computers, or do we classify all that they do as computing? Take a closer look at the iPhone. Sure, the phone part of it sucks - maybe even blows - but the internet browsing is pretty great (just needs flash to get my super awesome stamp of approval) and the media features are second to none. And the device is really still in its infancy. Compare where cellphones are today to where they were when Cooper made the first cellular call in 1973. Now give the technology another 35 years and imagine where things will stand.

To be fair, Cooper could be saying that universal devices can never rival dedicated devices - think DSLR versus a cell phone camera - and there he may be right, at least in some cases. But is that really what we're after? That sort of quality is just overkill for the average user, and splits from one of the features that makes combined devices so popular - convenience. Cell phone cameras can easily match point and shoot quality without requiring you to carry another device, and that's what makes them so great.

Whatever Cooper meant, the future he imagines is likely very different than the future we're likely to see. “Our future I think is a number of specialist devices that focus on one thing that will improve our lives," he said. And I think you're crazy.

Verizon might be getting cocky about this whole Droid thing, but it's becoming painfully clear that Big Red is hurting from all that missed iPhone business. In a move to recoup some of its losses to iPhone churn, Verizon may be looking at bumping that early termination fee - all the way up to $350.

To be fair, the iPhone is not the only thing to blame. People have been opening new lines on existing contracts for some time, paying the early termination fees, and then reselling contract-priced phones like the Blackberry Storm on eBay for a couple hundred bucks in profit. Well no more. The new fee will apply specifically to "advanced devices," which pretty much covers anything Verizon deems expensive enough to make you pay for.

The only good news is that the price will decrease by $10 per month over the life of your contract. So halfway through you're back to the original fee of $175.

Source: Boy Genius Report

Developer builds- who can trust 'em? You may have seen this coming, but the newest most recent build of Snow Leopard, version 10.6.2, restores support for Intel's Atom CPU. Yes, that means your hackintosh is safe if you've made the 64-bit upgrade.

As to reasons for the flip-flop, there's still no word from Apple. That likely means it was a bug, or an unintended consequence of some other change to the system. As such, I'd like to officially recant all those things I said about Apple going after the hacking community in light of a tablet release. It just ain't happening, folks. Carry on.

Today Apple announced that the App Store has breached the 100,000 mark. That's right, more than 100,000 apps are available for your iPhone or iPod Touch. A solid 50% of those apps are strictly for replicating flatulence and then auto-tuning it to your favorite T-Pain beat.

In all seriousness, it's another great milestone, and another great reason to reorganize the whole damn thing. This is probably the last time you'll hear an app count out of me until the 500,000, at which point the numbers won't even matter because of the hellacious mess the App Store will be in. It's not that I can find something when I'm explicitly looking for it, but that it's difficult to get the new and unmentioned stuff, the apps that don't make the blog circuit. Those are the things I still want access to. Appoftheday made a decent start, but app organization needs more than just a community vote.

The iPhone is mostly dummy-proof, at least in the sense that you won't find yourself accruing hundreds of dollars in fees because you stumbled on a bug in the mobile version of Safari. Or so I thought. As it turns out that very thing is possible, and not all that hard to pull off.

As I'm sure you know, Apple allows very few apps to run in the background on the iPhone. The iPod is one, but you might not be aware that Safari is another. Safari will continue to stream data from some web pages even while the app is "closed." It can be extremely useful for playing internet radio stations that don't have their own apps, but in the case of motion-jpegs, a filetype used for things like cam feeds, the user might not know the app is still streaming content, and potentially racking up some crazy data charges.

Obviously there are some pretty specific circumstances surrounding this problem. For one, you'd have to be in data roaming or traveling or somehow or another not on an unlimited plan. That's not something we'll see stateside too often. If you were caught in that situation, though, it would be pretty easy to generate a grand or two in overage fees I'm sure.

Luckily the solution is as simple as the problem. Just make sure you close any pages with auto-refreshing content if you're worried about it.

Source: MobileCrunch

Verizon's had some pretty clever ads lately, most of them targeted at AT&T and the iPhone. One of the latest plays on the "There's an app for that" saying that's become inextricable from the iPhone. Verizon's ad instead boasts, "There's a map for that," referring to the 3G coverage maps you see in the pictures. AT&T's taken issue with the ads - so much issue that the iPhone provider is suing - because it claims the ads are misleading.

The bulk of the accusation goes like this:

Consumers are interpreting the white or blank space on the maps to mean that AT&T customers who are not in an AT&T "3G" coverage area have no wireless coverage whatsoever, and therefore have no ability to use their wireless devices for any purposes in vast areas of the country. This interpretation is not surprising as Verizon, in its own coverage maps, uses white space to inform customers that no coverage of any kind exists.

I realize the average American consumer isn't as tech savvy as you and I, but for people to whom 3G matters I'd say Verizon's claims are pretty clear. And as someone who has recently moved a fair distance across the country, I can also vouch for the fact that AT&T's 3G coverage is at least as pathetic as that coverage map shows.

The part of the lawsuit that's truly entertaining, though, is where AT&T claims Verizon is jealous of the former's smashing smartphone sales. Sure, AT&T, everyone wishes they were selling the iPhone. You know what no one wants? The massive fallout you'll see when the iPhone is on every other provider.

I'm not sure why Peek decided to make a device specifically for Twitter users but it did, and the thing is finally for sale at Amazon. The TwitterPeek adds nationwide Twitter access to the standard email/texting device for all those Twitter users who don't currently have a smartphone. The device runs $99 with 6 months of included service or $199 for unlimited lifetime service.

The unlimited plan sounds alright, but even feature phones are starting to add Twitter service, so it seems a bit redundant to carry around yet another device for the simple service. If you need Twitter that badly, just upgrade your current plan or get a limited plan on a smartphone. It's really not so big a price difference.

This morning Amazon announced that it had closed the Zappos deal that had been rumored since July. Originally the online shoe retailer was valued at $928 million, but the final sale price was a whopping $1.2 billion. Yeah. With a B.

Zappos was happy to announce the news as well, stating that investors were compensated for Zappos shares with Amazon shares totaling the sale price. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh also pointed out that things will pretty much stay the same with regard to management, albeit with a few new faces around.

We've been spending the past few months obtaining all the proper government approvals, and I'm happy to say that we officially closed the deal at the split second between Halloween (10/31/09) and All Saints' Day (11/1/09). From a practical point of view, we've switched out our previous board of directors with a new management committee that is composed of people from Zappos as well as Amazon.

All in all, a pretty good weekend to be in either camp here. For Zappos, you just got $272 million richer. For Amazon, you just picked up a company that sells a billion shoes a year. Yeah. With a B.

Nothing's official just yet, but the latest Snow Leopard developer build, version 10.6.2, does away with Atom CPU support. It's not a big deal to the average Mac user, but for anyone who has put the hours of dedication and frustration into making a Hackintosh, it's a huge deal. It would effectively kill Snow Leopard for the little lappies, at least until someone can find a workaround.

For the few among us running OS X on a Dell Mini or other such devices, you're going to be stuck on 10.6.1 if you made the upgrade work. It has to make you wonder, though, if Apple isn't targeting the tiny community ahead of the tablet release to encourage a few more purchases. Then again, the community is so small and the anticipation of an Apple tablet so great that it's hard to imagine that to be the case.

The iPhone touched down in China this past Friday night missing one big feature: Wi-Fi. China's second largest mobile carrier, China Unicom, has an exclusive three-year deal with Apple to sell the phone.

Starting out sales might not be the runaway figures Apple saw in the US. After all, it's not that tough to get phones from other markets. Phones that include Wi-Fi. There have also been rumors that China Unicom hopes to sell Wi-Fi capable phones within a few months, giving Chinese consumers even more reason to hold off on buying one now.

There was still a modicum of Apple fanaticism to be had, though. The country's first iPhone owner, Zhi Xianzhong, waited almost eight hours to buy the phone.

Not many of us have a couple thousand dollars to throw down on a new audio rig, so building our dream speaker systems means piecing it together over some time, often buying low to mid quality substitutes for certain components. There are a few modular systems out there, but most of them require that you sacrifice sound quality for expandability. Orb Audio aims to change that, offering a modular system that looks good and by nearly every account sounds great, all at an affordable price.

Now I've not yet had a chance to hear an Orb system, but the reviews I've seen have been good and the installed locations are pretty impressive. Orb Audio systems are featured in a couple Wired stores in New York, were chosen for the Guitar Center Artist's Lounge, and have picked up a couple CES awards along the way.

You can pick up a basic Orb system from the company website - the only place you can purchase - for $549. A typical theater system will run $800-$1300 while premium system will push toward a few grand. That's a good bit cheaper than many systems, especially considering the reviews that put the system in the company of B&W.

If there's one thing that might scare potential Orb customers off it's the unique design. Though the speakers are available in a wide variety of finishes, the shape is very modern and might scare off a few significant others. There's also the fact that you can't go just anywhere and listen to these things. The company has a 30-day trial, but you'll need enough faith in reviews to get involved in it. I'm hoping my schedule slows down enough in the next couple weeks that I can review a loaner set for you guys. Until then, think about giving Orb a shot if you're in the market for a modular system.

It looks like Verizon will be launching more than one "Droid" branded phone on November 6th. According to a leaked document picked up at Engadget, the HTC Eris will hit stores the same day as Motorola's Droid at $199 with a $100 mail-in rebate.

The Eris is basically a rebranded HTC Hero, though in this case running Android 1.5 with the popular Sense UI. It's a sharp looking phone, but the processor leaves a bit to be desired. Also, no word on whether Verizon will be pushing Android 2.0 onto this thing, so you could be missing out on Google's free navigation app. Motorola's Droid, on the other hand, gives you a physical keyboard, much faster processor, and guaranteed Android 2.0.

For the price, though, it's hard to go wrong. The regular HTC Hero costs $180.

Source: Engadget

If you're going to release a great device, a gadget of any kind really, don't bog the thing down with rebates. It just gives me reason to pause before selling anything I can find just to get my hands on it. I wasn't so surprised to see Palm try the rebate thing with the Pre. The company really needed money. But Motorola? I figured they'd be a little better off. Thankfully, Best Buy's decided to just sell the thing for $199.99 outright with a contract.

This sort of thing takes a lot of the burden off the wireless stores, which tend to be small and understaffed, especially as you get more rural. It's also just nice to be able to walk in and pay the $200 without worrying about rebates. In case you forgot, the Droid launches on November 6th.

The community at Gizmodo came through big for Halloween and submitted pics of geeky costumes. There are some really good ones, though my personal favorite has to be baby Tanooki.

Geeky Costumes at Gizmodo

If you've been sitting on your next TV purchase for that glut of OLED TVs to flood the market, you shouldn't. LG's VP of OLED sales and marketing, Won Kim, says prices won't come down to LCD levels until 2016. Seven years is a long way off, and so much can change that Kim might be wrong, but in any case, OLEDs won't be reasonable anytime soon.

Kim's statements came shortly after LG announced a 15-inch OLED TV for its Korean market at the end of this year. No announcement for the US market, and that's sort of been the standard so far. Only Sony sells an OLED stateside, and it's just 11-inches. So it's not just market prices we're waiting on - the whole system has to mature enough to even be able to deliver the product.

Kim did say we would see 40-inch OLEDs by something like 2012, but you can bet they'll be expensive. Of course by then who's to say LCDs and Plasmas won't be nearly as good as an OLED? The "absolute black" that makes the OLED so attractive (among some other features) is nearly attainable now with dimming LED TVs. In seven year this generation of technology could come a long way.